Monday, November 17, 2008

The year was 1915, and here is what would ultimately become everyone's favorite planned real estate development. Unlike just 25 years before, people had started congregating near what would eventually become Reston Parkway, perhaps subconsciously aware that a Macaroni Grill would someday be built nearby. Of course, that hamlet was the drunken village of Wiehle, which was no match for the larger, more established town of Herndon, where no doubt they were concerned about the scourge of underemployed Irishmen loitering along the W&OD railway, looking for work. Perhaps the newly formed Herndon Heights suburb was home to that era's day labor center, before Samuel Gompers and other reactionaries of the time shamed the town into shutting it down.

And no, we don't know for sure if the labor reformer was still active in 1915, or if he'd ever visited Herndon. We just like saying "Gompers."